Bitcoin Surges, Nears All-Time High

Bitcoin prices surged by over 15 percent last week to hit a new multi-year high at $899 dollars per coin. Its little brother Litecoin wasn’t far behind with prices rallying for the first time since June. As usual first we’ll cover big brother and we’ll get back to LTC later in the article.

Bitcoin Surges, Nears All-Time High

Bitcoin rallied by over 15 percent to hit a new multi-year high at $899.65 on FXOpen. On other exchanges like BitStamp, prices peaked at $920 dollars. On Chinese exchanges, we hit a high of close to 6,600 Yuan, or $949 dollars going by today’s exchange rate (6.9530).

This is the usual order of things during major bull runs like the one we are in right now. Chinese sites are at the top, trading at a high premium over USD exchanges, followed by FXOpen and BTC-E, which tend to lag the US market a bit. Note that this usually works in the reverse as well. If the bull run ends, prices on Chinese exchanges will suffer disproportionally more then prices on USD exchanges.

The technical picture is largely unchanged. With the breakout above $800 bitcoin exacerbated the move higher. We hinted at this possibility last week in our previous article. The next potential catalysts are at the $1,000 round figure, followed by the all-time high for BTC/USD. This is at $1,090 on FXOpen and $1,163 on BitStamp. A decisive breakout above these levels could lead to more gains.

On the way down we have weak support at the $850 round figure, followed by the $822 retracement lows. The bears will need to push BTC back below the latest breakout point at $770 dollars to end the current rally. All three trends for bitcoin (short-term, medium-term and long-term) are bullish.

Litecoin Breaks Out From Range

It took a while but Litecoin finally followed big brother higher. On December 23rd we had a huge rally higher that both ended the downtrend and ushered in a new rally. The next day a high of $4.60 dollars was hit.

We’re now trading at $4.08, over 11 percent from the highs. Despite the sizable retracement, the trend is still up. A breakdown below the $3.50 figure will be needed to end the current rally. Above here we have several weaker support levels at $4.08, $4.00, $3.93 and $3.90.

On the upper end we find weak resistance at $4.15, followed by the $4.50 round figure. Higher still we have the highest high for the current uptrend at $4.60. A clean breakout above here could lead to more gains. For Litecoin both the short-term and medium-term trends are now bullish. But the long-term trend remains neutral.

Petar is a forex trader and writer with 9 years of experience in financial markets. He has been following bitcoin since 2010. A year ago, as the BTC market matured, he started getting more involved by writing articles on bitcoin and other alternative currencies.